22 August 2015

Review: Hominid Up by Neil Shepard

Brian Fanelli

In some ways, Neil Shepard’s sixth book
of poems, Hominid Up, feels
representative of his body of work to date, in that the book contains a
multitude of forms, styles, and subject matters, ranging from deep meditative
poems about rural New England to jazz poems. Where the book differs from
Shepard’s previous work, however, is in its stinging critique of contemporary
America and unfettered capitalism. Many of the book’s poems are appropriate for
the times, when class issues and the Occupy-themed slogan “We are the 99
percent” are part of the national dialogue, and in Ferguson, Baltimore, and
other communities, issues of race and class have led to mass demonstrations,
arrests, and damaged property. At this point in U.S. history, it would be
difficult for any poet of American descendent to ignore the tensions that have
dominated headlines over the last few years.

The book’s initial pages contain
several poems about New York City, a place the poet now calls home, after
moving there from Vermont. In one of the poems, “At the Corner of Broadway and
105th,” the sensory details of the city pulsate, including the
“hiss” of a bus and subways that “whoosh and rattle.” At the center of the poem
is a man who claims to have HIV and pleads with the speaker for money to pay
for public transportation to reach Beth Israel downtown. The poem’s ethical
dilemma arises when the speaker decides not to lend the man money, but
ultimately feels bad about it by the poem’s conclusion, confessing, “And I save
twenty bucks / and I wasn’t suckered, but later, I felt a swindler’s pride / as
if I’d cheated him of his valuables, and later still, my mind hit a black
mood.” This poem is especially striking in the questions it poses regarding our
reactions to poverty, especially when we claim to be liberal. Do we help, or do
we turn our backs?

Another poem, “Occupy Wall Street,”
captures the tent cities that popped up in Zuccotti Park, before Mayor
Bloomberg ordered the NYPD to shut it down a few months after its creation. The
poem is populated with famous slogans from the movement, including “We are the
99%” and “Banks got bailed out; we got sold out!” Anyone who participated in
any of the protests will be familiar with Shepard’s depiction of the police
reaction to the protestors:

No matter how deftly we death-swoon on
the sidewalks

before Bank of America, cops sweep in,
sweep us up

for arrest if we lie too long. No
matter

how coolly customers withdraw their
paltry sums

from Citi Bank or Chase, the chanters

on the sidewalks, in the lobbies,
shouting, Shame!,

we’re cuffed, arrested, tossed into
paddy wagons

by the corporation goons. No matter

how the barricades herd us, flocks
unwilling

to be fleeced, we compound our voices—

Banks
got bailed out, we got sold out!

There’s a push and pull that exists
within the poem between the “flocks” of protestors and the police, and yet, the
voice of the protestors is never stomped out in the poem, especially since
Shepard sets their voices in bold type, so that what they have to say rings
loudly throughout the poem, before the concluding lines, “There is / another
world, and it is in this one.” Those concluding lines represent what it felt
like to be at the protests in fall of 2011, specifically the possibility that
something would change and a major shift would happen. At the very least,
conversations happened in public spaces.

The end of the book shifts to rural New
England landscapes, while still addressing the haves and have nots. The poem
“Front Hayden’s Shack, I Can See to the End of Vermont,” for instance,
references the state’s liberal politics, but also how the 1 percent / real
estate has gobbled up land. The poem references a county in which a slew of
candidates, including a Marxist, “Progressive,” and “Cowshit Farmer,” run for
mayor, but despite the seemingly left-wing politics of the state, the speaker
admits, “But even here, it’s / darkening. Rising / real estate. High / balls at
five / We close our eyes / to the tale of two cities / nearby, Queen and
Capital.” If Vermont has succumb to rampant capitalism and the great class
divide, then what does that say about the rest of the country?

Hominid
Up offers Shepard’s sharpest critique of
rampant capitalism and shows how it impacts different American landscapes, from
New York City to rural Vermont. Some of the longer meditative works and
tributes to jazz musicians are reminiscent of Shepard’s earlier collections,
but Hominid Up is one of his most
diverse collections to date and one of the boldest for his willingness to so
openly address issues of race and class.

Brian Fanelli is the author of Front Man and All That
Remains. His poetry, essays, and book reviews have been published by The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Collar Review, [PANK], Chiron Review,
and other publications. He is a Ph.D. student at SUNY Binghamton and teaches at
Lackawanna College.